The Trio Sonata, an instrumental composition generally
demanding the services of four players reading from three part-books, assumed enormous
importance in Baroque music, developing from its earlier beginnings at the start of the
seventeenth century to a later flowering in the work of Handel, Vivaldi and Bach, after
the achievements of Arcangelo Corelli in the form. Instrumentation of the trio sonata,
possibly for commercial reasons, allowed some freedom of choice. Nevertheless the most
frequently found arrangement became that for two violins and cello, with a harpsichord or
other chordal instrument to fill out the harmony. Although some composers tended to
compromise in matters of form, trio sonatas were more often than not either in the form of
the Sonata da chiesa, or Church Sonata, with a sequence of four movements, slow, fast,
slow, fast, the quicker movements fugal in character, or in the form of the Sonata da
camera, or Chamber Sonata, rather resembling a suite of dance movements. The form was in
many respects that of a concerto grosso in miniature, and trio sonatas could often be
expanded into fuller concerto grosso form by the addition of extra instruments in contrast
with passages left for the smaller concertino group. The form was adapted to the new
Rococo requirements of the later eighteenth century, before being superseded by the
classical duo sonata and very occasionally by sonatas that used two melody instruments and
a chordal accompaniment, of which the present collection offers examples.

Georg Philipp Telemann was born in Magdeburg in 1681 and
studied at the University of Leipzig, where he founded a Collegium musicum later to be
directed by his younger contemporary Johann Sebastian Bach. From 1721 Telemann was Kantor
of the Johanneum in Hamburg and director of music in the five principal churches of the
city, a position he retained until his death in 1767. He was a prolific composer, showing
technical mastery and a peculiar facility that was equally pleasing to professional and
amateur musicians. His Trio Sonata in E minor, which allows alternative instrumentation,
is characteristic of his writing, with its happy blend of melodic invention and attractive
contrapuntal felicity.

The Italian composer Giovanni Maria Capelli, born in Parma in
1648, belongs to the generation of Corelli, the greatest of all trio sonata composers. For
many years he was in the service of Parma Cathedral as singer, priest and finally maestro
di cappella. His F major Trio Sonata is a fine example of the form in the hands of a minor
Italian master of the period.

The Trio in D major
by Carulli belongs to another world. Ferdinando Carulli, born in Naples in 1770, began his
career as a cellist but changed to the six-string guitar. In 1808 he settled in Paris,
where he won a considerable reputation as a guitarist and as a teacher of the instrument.
He died in Paris in 1841. The D major Trio naturally offers the guitarist an opportunity
for display in a texture that allows a measure of equality between the three instruments
in classical form.

Leonhard von Call was born in 1767 in Eppan in the Tyrol, then
part of Austrian territory. In Vienna he served as a liquidator's assistant to the
treasury, while providing the musical public with pleasant chamber music that found a
ready enough market, making frequent use of the guitar in various small ensembles. The C
major Trio, with its five movements, otters a pleasing diversion, with the two violins
often moving together, while the guitar provides its own characteristic accompaniment.

The German-born composer George Frideric Handel began his
career as a professional musician in Hamburg, moved for a few years to Italy, the
principal source of his operatic style, and thence, by way of Hanover, to London, where he
won himself a dominant position, at first in the Italian opera, and then in the creation
of English oratorio, his overwhelming popularity finding a place in the pleasure-gardens
as well as in the more formal requirements of the ruling House of Hanover, after the
accession of King George I. As in much of his music, Handel was following an Italian
example, here that of Corelli, in his twenty or so trio sonatas, the first of which, in C
minor, again allows alternative instrumentation for flute or recorder instead of the first
of the two violins.

The Trio of Joseph Kreutzer is typical in its operatic style of
the popular chamber music of the earlier nineteenth century, in which dramatic dialogue
between the violins alternates with passages in which the two voices move together,
abetted by the guitar, with its arpeggiated accompaniment and occasional sorties into
relative prominence. The melodies and texture are very much of the period of the more
distinguished violinist and composer Rodolphe Kreutzer, and above all of Rossini.

Anna and Quido Hölbling
Anna and Quido Hölbling studied at the College of Music and
Drama in Bratislava and formed a duo in 1969. Quido Hölbling won the title of laureate at
the 1967 Wieniawski Competition and the couple have performed in many recitals and
concerts at several of the major festivals including the Salzburg Festival. In 1983 they
were founder members of the Capella Istropolitana, the chamber group of the Slovak
Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jozef Zsapka
The outstanding Slovak guitarist Jozef Zsapka is a graduate of
the College of Music and Drama in Bratislava and, as a soloist, has made many recordings
of both Baroque and contemporary guitar concertos.